Asphodel
by ThRndmMrchngZmbe
Summary: After the UNSC Fort Detrick crashes on the outer colony world of Asphodel, the task of retrieving the ship's data core falls to a hardened team of ODSTs. Joined by a rugged police officer, they soon find that the situation on Asphodel is more dire than they first thought. [I do not own Halo, this is a fan work; all rights go to Bungie and 343 Industries.]


Josiah had learned long ago that during the later half of the long, drawn-out year on Asphodel it was barely a question of _if_ it was going to rain. It hardly ever came down in sheets, but it certainly came down all the same, and the capital city of New Roanoke had been designed to survive the instances in which it would rain for weeks at a time. The wide roads were more reinforced grate than polycrete, and the massive tunnels running below the roads acted as subterranean rivers to carry the rainwater down to the ocean. As a result, the constant rain had little effect on the city overall, other than doing a good job of getting everything within it wet.

Now, Josiah stood in his sweatpants, cup of coffee in hand, and watched the small droplets of water patter against the window of his apartment. Once upon a time he had found the rain depressing and bleak, but after a long decade of withstanding it he had grown accustomed, and even found himself grateful for the first silvery drops that fell from the sky after the lengthy droughts that were likely to happen between the rain seasons.

The integrated clock in his house struck six, and after a moment of silence, classical music filled the small apartment with the intent of waking him up; a futile effort considering he had been awake for several hours. Normally Josiah enjoyed the mellow sound of the cello floating through the air, but after his night of sleep, or lack thereof, he needed silence.

"House, stop," he said calmly, his eyes focused on something nonexistent. His deep voice reverberated through the room, easily overpowering the symphony of violins that had interjected. Instantly the music cut off, and as he had specified the night before a shower started in his bathroom. Sighing, Josiah drained the last of the coffee from his NRPD cup and set it on the counter. _A nine hour work day after three hours of sleep,_ he thought to himself. _I really need to reconsider that late shift Commissioner Lasker offered me..._

"Mornin', Ward," a familiar voice piped cheerfully as Josiah nearly fell into his chair, inserting his portable datapad into the computer on his desk. He had gotten to the police station five minutes before the start of his shift, which meant he had to run through the rain from his parking spot to the front door rather than take the covered sidewalk and lose a few precious minutes. As a result, he was wet and miserable in addition to being exhausted.

"Good morning, Sergeant," Josiah grumbled in return without looking up, logging into the station's server and clocking in before dumping his assignment files into the datapad. Sergeant James Parker, who had jurisdiction over Josiah despite the fact that he never seemed to leave the comfort of his spacious, heated office in the station, had been rather unsavory towards the younger man since he had started on the force nine years prior. Parker insisted that he had no hard feelings, but after a bit of digging Josiah had learned that the sergeant's wife had been killed in the battle of Pirth on Arcadia; a slaughter that Josiah was too young to understand, and now had little memory of. _A sorry reason to hate someone_ , Josiah had often thought while it was in the front of his mind. _How much would someone need to hate their own life to find some form of solace in hating another simply because they exist_?

"You have tickets today," Parker said bluntly, still hovering over Josiah's desk like a vulture waiting for roadkill to die. "I expect at least twenty by the end of the day, so you should probably hurry and get out there before the rain gets too heavy." Parker sneered, and sidled back to his warm, dry office. Josiah mumbled a curse, yanked his datapad out of its slot in his computer, and slid it into his pocket before storming off to gear up.

Josiah grumbled and huffed as he tightened the straps on his armor down in the armory, making sure the mask portion of his helmet was tight against his face and had no leaks. Because of the rain and the relatively high crime rate, (many people believed that living on an Outer Colony world meant that they were above United Earth Government laws) the officers of the NRPD were outfitted with specialized enclosed suits that kept out the rain, and the ECH252 helmet and air filtration system. The helmet was normally given to military police, but it had been issued to the New Roanoke officers in lieu of the blast shield variants after several threats of gas bomb attacks by a group of terrorists; as if the war with the Covenant hadn't caused enough of it to last a millennia. Josiah slid his datapad into the forearm slot of his armor, and automatically it linked up to his helmet, showing the time of day and his current assignment, as well as the amount of ammunition he had for the M6D on his hip. Josiah walked over to the weapons section of the armory, and punched in the code to the ammunition locker, retrieving the pistol magazines that had his name stenciled on the side, as well as a magazine for the DMR in the trunk of his Genet. After putting the ammo into the pouches on his belt and keying it in on his datapad, Josiah made his way back up to the parking lot, taking his time to walk under the curved glass that covered the walkway and watch the rain drum against it through the tint of his visor. Josiah loathed parking ticket duty, something Parker was well aware of and thus made it a point to give it to him every day that he was able to despite the fact that Josiah was certified in a plethora of other areas, earning marksman status on his pistol and rifle certifications. Of course, Josiah consistently scored atrociously in the shotgun portion of the certification, but he chalked it up to bad luck every time, unwilling to admit that he couldn't hit a target the size of a piece of paper at ten yards with a weapon designed for close quarters.

Josiah climbed into his car, a modified version of the civilian Genet that had been expanded to include a space behind the driver and passenger's seats to accommodate lawbreakers, and punched the button that started the hybrid engine. The car could technically drive itself, but the satellites above Asphodel were old, and hardly ever saw through the rain clouds that covered the planet most of the time, so Josiah put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot of the station on his own. His datapad, using a digital map of the city, provided a navpoint on his heads-up display that led him down the straight, wide roads of New Roanoke. The tall, thick polycrete buildings and their sky bridges passed by and over him as he drove, dull gray monoliths to the fact that this was an Outer Colony world, and thus did not deserve the shiny arches and curves of the Inner Colony cities or those on Earth.

Josiah sighed and pulled over as the blue navpoint on his HUD came to a stop over another Genet next to a digital parking meter that strobed silently with red light. This was why he hated parking tickets; they were boring and monotonous. The parking meter would scan to see if there was a car parked in front of it every fifteen minutes unless the car's owner had paid, and if it didn't have a ticket the meter would send a signal to a nearby metermaid (Josiah, on most days) and snitch on the guilty driver. The system had a lot of issues, with some meters having broken scanners, credit chip slots, or faulty programming, and so they often didn't register that an individual had paid, or that there wasn't a car parked in front of them. At first, Josiah had called them in for repairs, but after years of the city ignoring the fact that they were broken, he had stopped trying. Josiah raised his arm and keyed in the necessary information about the car, then sent a digital ticket to it. A yellow light started flashing where the windshield met the chassis of the car, signaling to the driver that they had a ticket, and after making sure that the light would stay on, Josiah pulled away and headed towards the next blue arrow on his HUD.

After trudging through five hours and fourteen tickets, Josiah pulled over at his favorite café for his lunch break, taking off his helmet once he was inside and sitting heavily in one of the metal chairs, sighing and resting his elbows on the table in front of him. Jessica, a rather nice looking waiter he would have asked on a date a long time ago were it not for the ring on her finger, smiled as he came in and brought him his usual lunch of a sandwich, soup, and a large coffee.

"I was wondering when you were going to come in," she said brightly, her blue eyes politely demanding Josiah's attention. "You look rough, Joe; have the sleeping pills stopped working?" Josiah had told her a while ago about his insomnia, and she in turn had suggested he go to the doctor and get put on sleep aids.

"It's not that," Josiah said, dragging his hand through his short dark hair and sighing. "My prescription ran out a few days ago, and with the supply ships from the inner circle becoming fewer and farther apart, the doc said the pharmacy didn't have enough to give to everyone that needed them, so they're holding them until the next shipment." Josiah punctuated his sentence with a sip of the coffee Jessica had set in front of him, grimacing as the bitter taste coated his tongue. He didn't even like coffee.

"Well, for your sake I hope it gets here soon," she said softly, giving Josiah a comforting pat on his armored shoulder. "I'm going to let you eat now, but you know where I am if you need me." With that, she floated away, leaving behind the subtle scent of wildflowers. Josiah shook her from the forefront of his mind and began eating.

He had only just finished and was scrolling through some online news forums on his datapad when the view through the large windows at the front of the café lit up with blue light, and a few seconds later Josiah heard the screeching of tires and the horrifying sounds of cars crashing into one another, permeated by screams. Josiah looked at Jessica, who mirrored his wide-eyed expression, then quickly put on his helmet and secured his mask, pulling his pistol from its holster and running outside before his chair even had time to clatter to the floor. Outside, it was chaos; some people fleeing from their cars and running through the street while others looked at the sky, frozen with fear. Following their gaze, Josiah became a part of the latter as his legs refused to move and his mouth fell open.

A slipspace rupture had been opened above the city, and a ship was in the process of leaving it, aimed directly towards the space elevator on the west side of New Roanoke. Josiah watched in fear and awe as the ship flew directly over his head, and barreled straight through the flimsy polycrete that made up a skyscraper less than a block away. Almost in slow motion, Josiah watched the building crumble and begin to fall, the sound of glass shattering and steel tearing ripping through the air. Josiah finally forced himself to move, and turned, running on weak legs down the sidewalk. The rumbling sound grew louder, and the ground beneath him began to quake as the building fell behind him, and Josiah looked over his shoulder just in time to see a baseball-sized chunk of polycrete skip across the road and slam into the side of his head, sprawling him onto the ground. His vision grew fuzzy and dark around the edges, then he slipped into unconsciousness.


End file.
